Working on resume. Last one I wrote (approx. 3 years ago)
was
something like 10 pages long, mostly because I felt some
need
to explain the context in which I did all of those strange
things.
I figured that the more people could read and know, the
fewer
dumb questions I'd have to fend, the fewer pointless
interviews,
etc. Of course, no more than 3-5 people actually read the
thing,
but they were entertained, and I did get a job (albeit not
the
one I was looking for). So this time the plan is to
hypertext it:
short summary with links to juicy details. Maybe I'll get it
out
today; or maybe I'll get my new basketball goal set up.

I was reading Andrew Leonard's Salon piece on how IBM wised
up to open source, and saw a link to an old essay by
Richard Gabriel, called
"The
Rise of Worse-Is-Better". Gabriel talks about two
approaches:

The MIT Approach, characterized by the phrase "the right
thing", which aspires to be correct, consistent, and
complete.

The NJ Approach, which favors simplicity over
consistency
and completeness. (A better name for this might be "Simple
uber Alles", or even KISS.)

The core argument is that simple systems are more
accessible,
more adaptable, have better survival characteristics, and
therefore proliferate widely, whereas "right thing" systems
are harder to build and maintain, are more expensive, etc.
This much is pretty straightforward, and plenty of examples
pop to mind. However, the interesting point is the assertion
that people willingly adapt to the simpler systems rather
than waiting for the "right thing" systems to adapt to them.

We see evidence of this all the time, but it's hard to shake
the conviction that "better" must really be better. I used
to
work in the typesetting industry, and one of the things I
worked on there was trying to automate the aesthetic rules
of fine advertising typography -- kerning, hung punctuation,
river avoidance, staggered rags, etc. -- but in the long run
such concerns turned out to be irrelevant. It turned out
that
desktop publishers were so happy just to get their pages
instantly, saving them trekking to the type shop and paying
out a small fortune, that they were willing to forego a lot
of finery.

But the arguments persist, ad infinitum, and they're hard to
settle -- partly because nobody really argues for worse, the
winners of "worse-is-better" just do it.

Last week (Thursday 7 Sept 2000) SCO laid off 190 employees.
I was one of them.

The layoff was in preparation for finalizing the acquisition
by Caldera of SCO's Server Software and Professional
Services
divisions. The layoffs should save the Caldera something
like $5-7M/Q, which given that SCO's non-Tarantella
divisions lost $10M last Q, and that Caldera itself lost
some
$7M in its last Q, isn't enough to make the new combine
whole, but is a start.

The company line is that the people who were laid off were
"redundant", and certainly there was some of that here. But
there may also be some sort of behind-the-scenes battle for
the soul of the new company. Certainly, one reason that SCO
has been losing money all year is that it has faced ever
stiffer competition from Linux, and that they are selling
out
to a Linux company can be viewed as capitulation. However,
the Linux company in question (Caldera) is only generating
$1.2M/Q in revenues, whereas SCO's Server/Services groups
still account for $25M/Q. Even with the layoffs (and I've
heard that Caldera laid people off, too, but not how many),
SCO will still account for 75% or more of the combine's
employees.

What may have made me "redundant" was that I was one of
the few SCO employees working on open source projects --
specifically, the long-promised Linux port of sar (which
also got shelved last week). SCO tended to view such
projects as good will generators, but it's not too hard to
imagine that the SCO managers who drew up the pink
slip lists now see that as an unnecessary luxury since
Caldera already enjoys all the good will it needs.

Or it may have just been a mercy killing: I had long argued
that SCO's proprietary OS business was a dead-end, and
that they had to move aggressively into Linux; that the real
way to build a Linux business is through service, not
proprietary bundling; and that what little value UnixWare
still has is as historical legacy. None of these efforts
amounted to a thing (other than possibly wearing my
welcome out). It's been the most frustrating thing I've
ever attempted to do, and I should be glad to put it
behind me. (Keep telling myself that.)

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